Pull Up A Chair…

I just want to say up front that this post has been a royal pain in the butt. I can’t get the HTML to work properly. It’s been eaten twice and I’ve had to re-type whole portions of it. And it’s not even that big. This has been anything but my usual relaxing Saturday morning thread. Why tell you this?

Because sometimes life just throws you rocks, and you keep on keeping on anyway.

See the picture above? Wouldn’t that be an awesome place to be today — fresh orange juice mimosas, a good book, some relaxing tunes on my iPod, and plenty of sunscreen. But the chair would definitely have to be a bit more comfy — something in a lounger with good padding, I think — and a larger umbrella to avoid that lobster girl look that I can get in the sun. Oh…yeeeeeeaaaah.

But instead this morning, I’m fighting my computer (which may be on its last legs…how can you tell if your laptop is dying or if it just hates you?). Watching Chicken Little for the 800th time this week. Hacking up a lung. Blowing my nose for the billionth time in the last two days (it sure feels like that, anyway…). But still being grateful for the nectar that is coffee, and for the adorable peanut sitting beside me here in the kitchen, and for the hubby who got up early and made coffee while I caught an extra hour of sleep.

It’s the little things.

It has been a long week at our house — and here at FDL — so let’s talk about the things you do to decompress. What’s your "Calgon, take me away!" kind of remedy? How do you deal with a "case of the Mondays?" Where is the best place that you have ever gone on vacation? If you could eat any dish at any restaurant on the planet, where and what would it be? If you could pick one song to get you up and dance or to mellow you out on your most frazzled day — or whatever — what song would that be?

What gets you into your comfort zone? And what makes you truly happy?

I originally thought it might be fun for everyone to share some links to their favorite online shopping pages — because I think it can be a blast to find new things that way — but lets broaden that out. I have a couple of dream vacation bookmarks, and I’m sure that others do as well. So share those, too — let’s all have a little fun this morning and take a virtual step into something that makes someone else happy.

Sometimes, it can be beneficial to sit back and think about the things that make us happy in life. All work and no play make us dull and cranky and ever so slightly off. And I’m feeling the need for a little play this morning, even in the midst of this viral ick that I’ve now caught from the peanut. Hey, a girl can dream, right?

Share some of your dreams this morning, and some of the things that say comfort to you. Pull up a chair…

Christy Hardin Smith

Christy is a "recovering" attorney, who earned her undergraduate degree at Smith College, in American Studies and Government, concentrating in American Foreign Policy. She then went on to graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania in the field of political science and international relations/security studies, before attending law school at the College of Law at West Virginia University, where she was Associate Editor of the Law Review. Christy was a partner in her own firm for several years, where she practiced in a number of areas including criminal defense, child abuse and neglect representation, domestic law, civil litigation, and she was an attorney for a small municipality, before switching hats to become a state prosecutor. Christy has extensive trial experience, and has worked for years both in and out of the court system to improve the lives of at risk children.